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a house that had belonged to one of the six, a man who now wandered Picardy like a beggar with his family. It was a lavish stone house beneath the citadel with a view of the town quay that was now crowded with English ships. “We’ll fill the town with good English folk,” the Earl said. “You want to live here, Thomas?”
    “No, sire,” Thomas said.
    “Nor me,” the Earl admitted. “A pig sty in a swamp, that’s what it is. Still, it’s ours. So what do you want, young Thomas?”
    It was morning, three days after the town’s surrender, and already the confiscated wealth of Calais was being distributed to the victors. The Earl had found himself even richer than he expected, for the great chest Thomas had brought from Brittany was filled with gold and silver coins captured in Charles of Blois’s camp after the battle outside La Roche-Derrien. One-third of that belonged to Thomas’s lord and the Earl’s men had counted the coins, setting aside a third of the Earl’s share for the King.
    Thomas had told his story. How, on the Earl’s instructions, he had gone to England to search his dead father’s past for a clue to the Grail. He had found nothing except a book in which his father, a priest, had written about the Grail, but Father Ralph had wits that wandered and dreams that seemed real and Thomas had learned nothing from the writings, which had been taken from him by the Dominican who had tortured him. But the book had been copied before the Dominican took it and now, in the Earl’s new sunlit chamber above the quay, a young English priest tried to make sense of the copy.
    “What I want,” Thomas told the Earl, “is to lead archers.”
    “God knows if there’ll be anywhere to lead them,” the Earl responded gloomily. “Edward talks of attacking Paris, but it won’t happen. There’s going to be a truce, Thomas. We’ll plead eternal friendship, then go home and sharpen our swords.” There was the crackle of parchment as the priest took up a new page. Father Ralph had written in Latin, Greek, Hebrew and French, and evidently the priest understood them all. He made an occasional note on a scrap of parchment as he read. Barrels of beer were being unloaded on the quay, the rumble of the great tuns sounding like thunder. The flag of England’s King, leopards and fleur de lys, flew from the captured citadel above the French standard, which was hung upside down as a mark of derision. Two men, Thomas’s companions, stood at the edge of the room, waiting for the Earl to include them. “God knows what employment there’ll be for archers,” the Earl went on, “unless it’s guarding fortress walls. Is that what you want?”
    “It’s all I’m good for, my lord. Shooting a bow.” Thomas spoke in Norman French, the language of England’s aristocracy and the language his father had taught him. “And I have money, my lord.” He meant that he could now recruit archers, equip them with horses and take them on the Earl’s service, which would cost the Earl nothing, but the Earl could then take one-third of everything they plundered.
    That was how Will Skeat, common-born, had made his name. The Earl liked such men, profited from them, and he nodded approvingly. “But lead them where?” he asked. “I hate truces.”
    The young priest intervened from his table by the window. “The King would prefer it if the Grail were found.”
    “His name’s John Buckingham,” the Earl said of the priest, “and he’s Chamberlain of the Receipt of the Exchequer, which may not sound much to you, young Thomas, but it means he serves the King and he’ll probably be Archbishop of Canterbury before he’s thirty.”
    “Hardly, my lord,” the priest said.
    “And of course the King wants the Grail found,” the Earl said, “we all want that. I want to see the damn thing in Westminster Abbey! I want the King of damned France crawling on his bloody knees to say prayers to it. I want pilgrims from all Christendom